The more you beat me, I will fawn on you, And to be used, as you use your dog!"

I have seen fool women and fool men act just that way, and the more they were spurned, the more they clung to their infatuation.

Puck returns with the flower containing the juice that will make wanton women and licentious men return to their just lovers.

Oberon grasping the herb says:

"I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows
Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows;
Quite over-canopied with blooming woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine;
There sleeps Titania, sometime of the night
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight,
And with this juice I'll streak her eyes
To make her full of hateful fantasies.
And take thou some of it, and seek through this

grove;

A sweet Athenian lady is in love

With a disdainful youth; anoint his eyes;
But do it, when the next thing he espies
May be the lady."

Titania enters with her fairy train and orders them to sing her to sleep, and be gone.

Oberon finds his queen sleeping and squeezes some of the love juice on her eyelids, saying:

"What thou see'st when thou dost awake
Do it for thy true love take;

Love and languish for his sake;

When thou makest, it is thy dear,
Wake when some vile thing is near."

Lysander and Hermia wander in the woods, lost and tired, and sink down to rest. He says:

"One turf shall serve as pillow for us both, One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth!"

Puck finds the lovers asleep, and says to Lysander:

"Churl, upon thy eyes I throw,

All the power that this charm doth owe,
When thou wakest, let love forbid
Sleep his seat on thy eyelid."

Puck finds Bottom in the woods, rehearsing the play for the marriage of Theseus, and translates the weaver into an ass, with a desire for love. He wanders near the flowery bed where Queen Titania sleeps.

She hears him sing, and opening her eyes, says:

"What angel wakes me from my flowery bed? Thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me, On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee!"

Bottom says:

"Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that;

Reason and love keep little company now-a-days!”

Oberon relents and releases his Fairy Queen from her dream of infatuation with Bottom disguised as an ass, and says:

“But first I will release the fairy queen, Be as thou wast wont to be;

(Touching her eyes with the herb.) See as thou wast wont to see; Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower, Hath such force and blessed power, Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen."

Titania awakes and exclaims:

"My Oberon, what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamored of an ass!"

Titania is not the only woman who is enamored by an Ass; in fact the mismatched, cross-purposed, twisted, infatuated affections of the sordid, deceitful earth are as thick as blackberries in July, while pretense and pampered power greatly prevail around the globe.

Theseus and his train wander through the woods in preparation for the grand hunt and find Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia and Helena still asleep under the magic influence of Puck.

Theseus wonders how the lovers came to the wood, and says to the father of Hermia:

"But speak, Egeus; is not this the day That Helena should give answer of her choice?”

Egeus:

"It is, my lord."

Theseus:

"Go bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns. (Expresses surprise at their situation.) How comes this gentle concord in the world, That hatred is so far from jealousy, To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity.”

The lovers are reconciled to their natural choice, and Theseus decides against the father:

"Egeus, I will overbear your will,
For in the temple by and by, with us
These couples shall eternally be knit.”

Bottom wakes and tells his theatrical partners:

"I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was,

Man is but an ass, a patched fool.

Eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was!"

The vast audience laughed heartily at the befuddled language of Bottom, the weaver, and imagined themselves under the like spell of fantastic fairies.

The fifth and last act opens up with Theseus and his Amazonian Queen in the palace, prepared for the nuptial rites, and also the marriage of Lysander and Demetrius to their choice.